Developed by Australian company Animation F/X and published by Manaccom domestically and by Apogee Software internationally, Mystic Towers is an isometric action RPG released in 1994. You play as Baron Baldric, a geriatric wizard who must rid the twelve Lazarine Towers of all of their monsters to release his village from a curse.

Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow (2005), the first installment of Castlevania on the Nintendo DS, is a direct sequel to GBA hit Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow. In it, Soma Cruz continues to cultivate his unhealthy obsession with collecting the souls of his enemies.

Using the powers that only tool assistance can provide, every single possible soul is collected in a bit over 35 minutes. If you've ever played the game, you know what a pain those souls can be.

Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow (2005), the first installment of Castlevania on Nintendo DS, is a direct sequel to GBA hit Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow.

Like its predecessor, after finishing the game, you can choose to ignore pretty-boy Soma Cruz and instead play as Julius Belmont. Unfortunately, it seems that Julius's skills have waned a bit since his last appearance. Yoko Belnades and Alucard easily pick up the slack, though... or they would, but this run skips Yoko.

Unlike our other Julius run for Dawn of Sorrow which goes through more of the game, this run manages to skip most of the game by using a zipping glitch to get into the Mine of Judgement early.

Dawn of Sorrow (2005), the first installment of Castlevania on Nintendo DS, is a direct sequel to GBA hit Aria of Sorrow. Everyone is trying to kill our hero Soma Cruz, since in the previous game he absorbed all of Dracula's attributes. Leave it to weird cults to try and bring about the end of the world by unleashing this power.

The game is so fully broken at this point that there really is no plot in this run. Or final boss. Or much of anything at all. Using movement optimizations and a new zip, this movie completes the game 19.33 seconds faster than its predecessor. More details about the glitches can be found in the author's comments.

DS Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow (USA) "Julius, in bounds" in 19:20.63 by cpadolf.

Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow (2005), the first installment of Castlevania on Nintendo DS, is a direct sequel to GBA hit Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow.

Like its predecessor, after finishing the game, you can choose to ignore pretty-boy Soma Cruz and instead play as Julius Belmont. Unfortunately, it seems that Julius's skills have waned a bit since his last appearance. Yoko Belnades and Alucard easily pick up the slack, though.

Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia, the third game in the series for the DS, takes a different direction from its direct predecessors in that it is more of a stage-based game, similar to the earliest entries in the series, rather than the "Metroidvania"-style first established by Symphony of the Night.

This run plays as Shanoa, who uses her Glyphs and copious amounts of backdashing to seal away Dracula once again.

Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia, the third game in the series for the DS, takes a different direction from its direct predecessors in that it is more of a stage-based game, similar to the earliest entries in the series, rather than the "Metroidvania"-style first established by Symphony of the Night.

This run plays as Albus, only available as a character after the player has cleared the game as Shanoa. Watch in awe as he beats down this difficult game with reality warping abilities and flaming kicks.

Note: This movie starts where a main quest TAS left off. We do not usually accept movies beginning from a save. Please read the rules to see our reasons.

The second Castlevania title released on Nintendo DS after Dawn of Sorrow, this game is a direct sequel to Bloodlines on Sega Genesis. Dracula rises from the dead yet again (cue groan), and it's up to Jonathan Morris, helped out by Charlotte Aulin, a powerful mage student, to defeat him.

Beating Dracula into a pile of dust in under five minutes wasn't enough for our heroes, so this time they wreck his entire castle and surrounding areas before killing him. Every boss is slain, so you get to see more of that fast "showtime" action. Significant glitching is used; read the author's comments for more information.

The second Castlevania title released on Nintendo DS after Dawn of Sorrow, this game is a direct sequel to BloodLines on Sega Genesis. Dracula rises from the dead yet again (cue groan), and it's up to Jonathan Morris, helped out by Charlotte Aulin, a powerful mage student, to defeat him.

This run is an improvement of 14.06 seconds over the previous run by the same author and uses many of the same glitches. Yet another slightly different route selection as well as better optimisation sends Dracula back to his coffin even faster.

Like many Castlevania games, Portrait of Ruin has extra alternate play modes available after completing the primary quest. In this case, you get to play as Richter Belmont and Maria Renard, using a dual character system very similar to the main quest.

mtbRc improves his previous movie by 29.15 seconds, thanks to better overall optimisation and the usage of the sliding tackle.

Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon is the second remake of the original Fire Emblem, and the first Fire Emblem game for DS. The story follows the Altean prince Marth on a quest to win back his home kingdom and save his kidnapped sister. Characters and chapters that were omitted in the original game and the first remake were introduced in this title.

Kingdom Hearts Re:coded is a remake of the mobile game Kingdom Hearts coded, released in North America in 2011. It is notable for combining many elements from previous handheld games in the Kingdom Hearts series, in particular 358/2 Days and Birth by Sleep.

In this run, watch as arandomgameTASer dodges, lunges, and yells his way through the game's various Disney inspired levels, abusing a surprising number of bugs and tricks along the way. Let's hope Sora finds a good masseuse.

All encodes of this run come with the author's lengthy commentary. The YouTube encode removes the credits and its associated ending theme for copyright reasons.

Pokémon: Diamond Version is part of the 4th generation of Pokémon games, after Ruby, Sapphire and Emerald. For the first time in the main series, it features 3D graphics and online play over the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection. In addition, there are 107 new Pokémon to catch.

Pokémon: Pearl Version is part of the 4th generation of Pokémon games, after Ruby, Sapphire and Emerald. For the first time in the main series, it features 3D graphics and online play over the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection. In addition, there are 107 new Pokémon to catch.

Although it is possible to warp large distances within the game by using out-of-bounds glitches, making it possible to skip directly to the end, this movie refrains from saving and resetting, which is required to perform that sort of long-distance warp. However, glitches are used for other purposes, such as bypassing obstacles.

Pokémon: Pearl Version is part of the 4th generation of Pokémon games, after Ruby, Sapphire and Emerald. For the first time in the main series, it features 3D graphics and online play over the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection. In addition, there are 107 new Pokémon to catch.

In this run, MKDasher beats the game fast using luck manipulation and a major glitch that loads the overworld map incorrectly, allowing him to venture outside the level boundaries. For more information, see the author's comments.

Based on the award-winning TV show, Avatar follows Aang, Katara and Sokka as they journey through exotic locations filled with adventure to help Aang fulfill his destiny to master the four elements and become the Avatar. Along the way, they are challenged by The Maker, who threatens to use her machines to bring an end to the Fire Nation herself.

This run by solarplex uses precise movement and clever battle strategies to beat the game as fast as possible.

The Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow main quest TAS has become even more glitched. Using an obscure out-of-room travel technique involving in-game saving and subsequent dying, klmz plows through the game with the confident pace of a cold-blooded killing machine in a little under seven minutes — a whole 31.72 seconds faster than the previous movie by the same author!

We recommend reading the author's comments for more information on the death warp glitch and other time-saving techniques used to make this improvement happen.

Everyone who has at least once attempted to gather a soul from each of the 120 different enemies in Aria of Sorrow, especially during a speedrun, knows the frustration it incurs after a hundredth failed attempt to get the required drop. That just makes this all-souls TAS, played on hard mode, even more impressive.

This is an improvement of 1:38.85 over the previous movie, thanks to a more optimised route and newly used items. Please read the authors' comments for more details.

If you would like to see the game beaten even faster, don't miss the any% run by one of the authors, klmz.
Note: Starting from reset was necessary to use hard mode. However, doing so is normally not allowed — refer to the rules to see the reasons.

Those who greatly dislike that Aria of Sorrow's main character isn't related to the Belmont clan whatsoever can safely relax, because the powerhouse known as Julius Belmont enters the stage in the relatively short run of this Castlevania installment.

Julius is only available to those who have completed the main quest. While he can't do most of Soma Cruz's fancy tricks, he can get around just as quickly by glitching through walls and hopping madly around the castle, producing almost inhuman sounds with every jump.

This is an improvement of 3.70 seconds over the previous publication.

Note: This movie starts where a main quest TAS left off. We do not usually accept movies beginning from a save. Please read the rules to see our reasons.

Nathan Graves is a vampire hunter trying to save his master, Morris, from the clutches of Dracula. Normally this would require collecting lots of different items as well as hours of leveling, but Cardboard proves collectible cards passé by gathering almost none of the cards required for spells and blazing through the game at warp speed without regard to levels or his own safety.

This movie is a 10.5 second improvement over the author's previous movie through various small & thorough optimizations.

When played normally, Castlevania: Circle of the Moon is a rather long game, in which exploration, leveling up, and killing bosses in order to gain access to different items or portions of the castle is necessary. However, a bit of luck manipulation and a series of glitches involving DSS cards throw all these aspects of gameplay out of the window, allowing the player to warp directly to Dracula and kill him humiliatingly in just over 5 minutes.

This movie is a 21 frame improvement over the previous movie by the same author due to some small optimizations.

In Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance, the Belmont clan must again rise to the challenge: Dracula's castle is in disarray and is in serious need of an interior decorator! In this movie, Juste Belmont zips through walls, under floors, and over zombies with the very important task of rearranging furniture. (He also defeats Dracula and rescues his best friends along the way, but that's not very important.)

This movie is a 6:32.48 improvement over its predecessor, thanks to several new improvements and optimizations.

Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance is the second Castlevania game to appear on the Game Boy Advance. Juste Belmont and his friend Maxim are drawn to the newly resurrected Dracula's Castle in order to save their mutual friend Lydie, although it remains to be seen who will be saving whom.

This run plays through the Boss Rush mode using Simon Belmont, the original hero of Castlevania. Simon is pretty slow, but he still powers through the bosses with massive amounts of cross abuse.

This is a really, really fast TAS through Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance played with Maxim, who is only available after the game is beaten once. Most of the game is glitched through by being stuck in different walls, so it's hard to explain what happened in this run; see it for yourself.

If you like this run but have a craving for more Maxim action, be sure to check out the Maxim warpless run.
Note: This movie starts where the main quest movie left off. We do not usually accept movies beginning from a save. Please read our rules to see our reasons.

GBA Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance (USA) "Maxim, all bosses" in 05:47.68 by gstick.

This is a really fast TAS through Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance played as Maxim, who is only available after the game is beaten. Unlike in the glitch-warped run, the protagonist doesn't directly fight Dracula and instead defeats every boss, reaching Dracula the intended way. However, this doesn't stop Maxim from making short work of every boss and sinking into walls wherever he wants.

This TAS by gstick improves the prior run by 1:42.59 thanks to further optimizations and an entirely new route.

Note: This movie starts where the main quest movie left off. We don't usually accept movies beginning from a save, though. Please read our rules to see our reasons.

Dokapon Monster Hunter is a RPG with a combat system based on Rock Paper Scissors. This leads to massive luck abuse in a Tool Assisted run. The hero never takes any damage while eliminating every boss in a single round. More detailed notes are available in the author's comments.

Final Fantasy Tactics Advance is a strategy role-playing game for the Game Boy Advance. The gameplay is similar to the original Final Fantasy Tactics for the PlayStation. The player controls up to six units in grid-like, turn-based battles. For the most part, players are free to decide the party's jobs and abilities.

This run uses extreme amounts of luck manipulation to beat the game in less than 3 hours.

Fire Emblem is the seventh game in the series of strategy RPGs, and the first to be given a release outside Japan. When Eliwood discovers his father is missing, he sets out to find him, but what he discovers is far more amazing and terrifying than he ever imagined.

With carefully planned strategy, the runners complete this game in a timely manner, knocking off the entirety of the first modes available in a mere 140 turns.

Fire Emblem: Fūin no Tsurugi (ファイアーエムブレム封印の剣) is the 6th game in the Fire Emblem tactical series and the first on the Game Boy Advance console. Like other games in the series, it features a tactical combat system which can be heavily manipulated by a tool-assisted run.

A huge amount of route planning was required to ensure that this run is as fast as possible; detailed analyses of each chapter can be found in the authors' comments.

The Fire Emblem series is popular for its tactical-role-playing element. This is the eighth installment of the series, usually taking many hours to finish and hundreds of turns.

In this playthrough, Vykan12 takes the game one step further, playing on the hardest setting - this takes a couple of minutes longer than the previous version, but reduces the turn count to a mere 93 turns.

'Golden Sun' is the first installment in the 'Golden Sun' series, developed by Camelot Software Planning. The game is notable for certain distinctive game elements, such as the use of special "Djinn" that empower the player and can be used against enemies.

In this run, kien uses the infamous Retreat Glitch to beat the game in 3 hours.

Keitai Denjuu Telefang 2 is the Game Boy Advance sequel to the first Telefang game. Taking place in a different part of the Denjuu world from the first one, this game shares some qualities with Telefang 1. The battle system is similar, as is the gathering-phone-numbers system, but a good deal of things are quite different from the original.

The game follows a blue-haired protagonist (named by the player, but originally called Kyou) as he journeys on his quest to become a T-Fanger. Along the way, he encounters Diabolos, who is not content with humans entering the Denjuu universe and so is killing off the Antenna Trees, thereby cutting off access to the Human World.

Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories is the second Kingdom Hearts game released, detailing Sora's encounters in the mysterious Castle Oblivion.

In this run, Doc Skellington heavily abuses luck for nearly everything, beating the game in about the time it would normally take one to finish the first level.
The YouTube encode removes the credits and its associated ending theme for copyright reasons.

Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories is the second Kingdom Hearts game released, detailing Sora's encounters in the mysterious Castle Oblivion.

This run is done on Reverse/Rebirth, which is Riku's campaign. The author, Doc Skellington, heavily abuses luck for nearly everything, beating the game in about the time it would normally take one to finish the first level. More information can be found in the author's comments.
The YouTube encode removes the credits and its associated ending theme for copyright reasons.

Mega Man Battle Chip Challenge is an offshoot of the Mega Man Battle Network series of Mega Man games. While not the most popular game in the series, it offers many opportunities for TASing, with lots of luck manipulation and route planning.

This run by mtvf1 plays through the game speedily and gets the best ending. See the author's comments for a detailed analysis of some of the strategies and routes used.

Imagine Mega Man as an RPG set in an alternate universe where he and his fellow robots aren't robots but computer programs, and you end up with this series - but even this unique take on the premise is no barrier to continuing TASVideos' long history of quality Mega Man runs.

If you care to know more about the run, be sure to read the extremely long set of author's comments (which comprise, in fact, the longest such set of comments on the site - you have been warned). We also have a run for the second game in the series.

The Mega Man Battle Network series envisions Mega Man and his friends and enemies as computer programs rather than robots. It also changes gameplay from platformer to RPG, with battle mechanics similar to collectible card games.

In the second game, Lan and Mega Man are fighting a terrorist organization called Gospel, but this TAS divulges little of the plot. The author, mtvf1, races through the game, avoiding unnecessary random battles and precisely manipulating battle chip winnings and order to quickly overcome all foes. He also improves his previous movie by 2:05.93 minutes.

Pokémon: Ruby, Sapphire and Emerald form the third generation of Pokémon, after Pokémon: Gold and Silver. Noticeable differences include the graphics and interface, Pokémon abilities, and running shoes that allow the player to move around much faster in the overworld before getting the bike.

In this movie, GoddessMaria applies her experience with TASing the game's alternate modes to a full run, finishing in under an hour and twenty minutes using lots of luck manipulation. At some point, her trainer gets fed up with all these slow battles, flies to the end, and storms the Elite Four throwing bad eggs at anyone who wants a fight.

Note: To play the vbm, you need to have Real Time Clock on and Flash 128k as the Save Type. Real Time Clock is for sync, while Flash 128k is to prevent the game from displaying a white screen.

Pokémon: Ruby, Sapphire and Emerald form the third generation of Pokémon, after Pokémon: Gold and Silver. Noticeable differences include the graphics and interface, Pokémon abilities, and running shoes that allow the player to move around much faster in the overworld before getting the bike.

This TAS completes the game without using any glitches. There is another TAS of this game which uses a notable glitch to skip through the second half of the game much faster.

Note: To play the bk2 file you need to have configure your timezone to GMT-5 (US Eastern Time).

Pokémon: FireRed Version is an enhanced version of the original Pokémon: Red Version. Many glitches have been removed, and the random mechanics behind wild encounters have changed. This leads to very different strategies compared to our fastest runs on the originalgeneration of games, and as a result, runs of this game see much more of the plot.

Watch as MKDasher crushes this game using Clefable (the first evolved form of Clefairy) and lots of luck manipulation. This run improves the previous version by over 2 minutes by fighting most battles with Clefable instead of Squirtle and using Metronome (which picks a random move to use from all moves in the game) against the Elite Four.
There is also an encode here that contains interesting data like PP left for each move, Pokémon stats, and some commentary on the run alongside the video.

Pokémon: Ruby, Sapphire and Emerald form the third generation of Pokémon, after Pokémon: Gold and Silver. Noticeable differences include the graphics and interface, Pokémon abilities, and running shoes that allow the player to move around much faster in the outside overworld before getting the bike.

FractalFusion and GoddessMaria complete the game in a mere 1:31:45, 3 minutes and 22 seconds faster than the previous Sapphire Version run. Instead of using Machop/Machoke, this run now uses Taillow/Swellow, which is obtained far earlier in the game, also has Guts as an ability, and has powerful moves early on and throughout. The movie also uses advanced methods of luck manipulation with the help of RNG analysis. For more details, see the submission text.
Note: To play the vbm, you need to have Real Time Clock on and use Flash 128k as Save Type. Real Time Clock is for sync, while Flash 128k is to prevent the game from giving a white screen.

Shining Soul is an Action RPG by Atlus. It is the first 'Shining' game to not be produced by Camelot Software Planning, and thus is not considered canon in the 'Shining' universe. However, the game serves as an internal homage to much of the 'Shining' series. All of the bosses are major villains from a previous 'Shining' game.

The author manipulates randomly-placed monuments to appear, increasing attack power as much as eight-fold during the run. Additionally, hundreds of critical attacks had to be painstakingly manipulated to allow for enemies to die in a single hit.

Shining Soul II is the last 'Shining' title to reach American shores, and the author's 5th 'Shining' TAS on the site. Unlike somepreviousgames in the series, this game and its prequel play more like traditional Action-RPGs. This game, like its prequel, allows the player to pick a character type. In this run, the character chosen was a ninja, for his ability to use speed magic.

The author uses a glitch to dupe power wines and bombs, the former massively increasing his attack strength, and the latter making the run look more like Bomberman than a 'Shining' game!

John Romero's Daikatana is set in 2455 AD, in a dystopian future brought on by the actions of a man named Kage Mishima, who now rules the earth. However, this future is actually an alternate timeline created by the mystical Daikatana sword, which allows the one who wields it to travel through time. A martial arts teacher, Hiro Miyamoto (no relation to Shigeru), journeys to recover the Daikatana and return the universe to its natural timeline.

Devil Island, also known as Emo Dao (惡魔島), is an action role-playing bootleg game for the Game Boy Color developed by Vast Fame. It copies Konami's Japan-exclusive NES game, Getsu Fuuma Den, with its gameplay. The game's aesthetics are styled after the Castlevania franchise, also by Konami. Much like Castlevania, the player's default weapon is a whip, except it can be held down for rapid fire.

This run abuses the demo mode of the game to get all items and reach the end of the game early, which is why it is so short. See the author's comments for some explanations.

Enix decided to hop on the monster collection/battling bandwagon with Dragon Warrior Monsters, in which the main character, Terry, makes friends with various monsters from previous Dragon Warrior games so he can win the Starry Night Tournament and rescue his sister.

This movie is 7:46.48 faster than the previous version. Some time is saved by using the (JPN) version over the (USA) version, but much more time is gained through heavy bot-assisted luck manipulation. Reading the author's comments is recommended.

Dragon Warrior Monsters 2, originally titled Dragon Quest Monsters 2 (ドラゴンクエストモンスターズ) is the second game in the Dragon Quest series spin-off, Dragon Quest Monsters. Like its predecessor, it revolves around taming and training monsters from the Dragon Quest universe to do your fighting for you.

What is normally a long RPG has been significantly shortened from the use of glitches to skip content; a full listing is available in the author's comments.

GBC Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (USA/Europe) in 1:08:49.74 by SuperMonkeypotato & jlun2.

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets is the sequel to the Sorcerer's Stone for the Game Boy Color released on November 5, 2002. This game is similar in gameplay to the original game with it's turn-based RPG combat system, but now allows use of Harry Potter's two best friends Ron and Hermione in his party in order to help fight creatures. This is the last game that was made for the Game Boy Color.

In this run, SuperMonkeypotato and jlun2 traverse through Hogwarts to once again gain the most points for Gryffindor.

If you're interested in the first entry of the series on the Game Boy Color, check out this run by jlun2 which goes through the game as fast as possible.

GBC Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (USA) in 1:08:25.48 by jlun2.

In the first Harry Potter game for the Game Boy Color, the story of Harry's first year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry is told in the form of a traditional role-playing game.

Playing as Harry, one advances through the plot of the book and the movie by fulfilling quests, battling monsters and gaining experience and levels.

Combat is turn-based, with Harry being able to use a variety of spells against various critters and other enemies. In addition, card combinations of Famous Witches and Wizards Collector's Cards can be used to produce powerful magical effects. These cards can be found all over the freely explorable Hogwarts. Potions that refill stamina and magic points can be found, bought or mixed by Harry himself, but only with the right ingredients.

As in other Potter games, Harry also competes for house points for Gryffindor, hoping to win the House Cup in the end.

The game features several mini-games that, once found in the main game, can also be accessed from the main menu.

Note: The original encodes contain footage that deserves an epilepsy warning for it's flickering in the latter part of the run. So we provide a cleaned up version of the run in the alternate encodes.

Keitai Denjū Telefang (携帯電獣テレファング) is a series of video games produced by Natsume and published by Smilesoft. The games are monster-battling games, where the player contacts various creatures using a cell phone-like device called a D-Shot in order to get them to battle the foes he or she will encounter. The name of the series derives from Keitai, which is Japanese for "cell phone," since phoning creatures is an integral part of the game, and "fang," to symbolize the various beasts involved.

This movie improves its predecessor by more than a half of a minute. Significant glitching is used; you will likely have to read the authors' comments to understand what's going on.

Keitai Denjū Telefang (携帯電獣テレファング) is a series of video games produced by Natsume and published by Smilesoft. The games are monster-battling games, where the player contacts various creatures using a cell phone-like device called a D-Shot in order to get them to battle the foes he or she will encounter. The name of the series derives from Keitai, which is Japanese for "cell phone," since phoning creatures is an integral part of the game, and "fang," to symbolize the various beasts involved.

Passwords (phone numbers) can be used to obtain very strong Denjuu, but are not used in this run. There's also a way to beat this game insanely fast with the use of major glitches, like this other movie we have for this game does, but those aren't used in this run either.

Pokémon: Blue Version is part of the first generation of games within its famous series, known for having a very large number of beneficial glitches. In fact, the game can be completed in less than one minute of in-game time using save data corruption (as evidenced by this run), but this run avoids such techniques in favor of activating an entirely different glitch.

This movie was console verifed on Game Boy Player, you can watch it here.

GBC Pokémon: Gold Version (USA/Europe) in 2:54:27.15 by FractalFusion.

Pokémon Gold and Silver form the second generation of Pokémon, after Pokémon Red and Blue. The main differences between the generations is that the game is now in full color, and that there are 250 Pokémon instead of 151.

This movie plays through Pokémon Gold in a fairly fast manner, catching only
a half dozen Pokémon in the process, but acquiring all the gym badges, and
ultimately beating the protagonist of the previous generation of Pokémon games.

The author of this movie, FractalFusion, has written very extensive
details of anything regarding this movie, including even some of the
mathematical formulas used by the game. As usual, we recommend reading these comments.

This movie requires VBA1.7.2 v17 to synchronize. See the submission text for details.

Pokémon: Silver Version takes place 3 years after Blue, Red and Yellow, and puts the player in a brand new world: Johto. The gameplay is very similar to the previous games, but with several improvements, including new functions for the player's PokéGear, a Pokédex that can now be sorted by evolution type, and of course, new Pokémon.

In this run, MrWint uses a glitch involving the Coin Case to execute arbitrary code and finish the game 24 minutes faster than the previous version. As with his TASes of Red Version, the entire input file was generated by a computer program that brute forced the game for optimal luck manipulation. The expansive testing done by the program is the reason for the astronomical rerecord count.

We also have a run of a second generation Pokémon game that avoids corrupting the memory.

Pokémon: Yellow Version is part of the first generation of games within its famous series, known for having a very large number of beneficial glitches. In fact, the games can be completed in less than one minute of in-game time by save data corruption as shown by this run, and completed in around 10 minutes using a more "conventional" glitch, as shown by this run. These runs break the game, and avoid much of the gameplay intended by the developers.

In contrast, this run by TiKevin83 refrains from using any memory corrupting glitches and beats the game in a little over an hour and half. The Pokédoll trick is used to skip a dungeon in the game, but that is considered a minor developer oversight and does not corrupt the memory.

The current Pokémon: Yellow Versionspeed record uses heavy glitches that allow the player to catalog every Pokémon in slightly over a minute. Is there any way to get more ridiculous than that? Yes! In this run, using nothing but the Game Boy buttons and tool-assisted precision, the game is made to run an arbitrary program which greatly expands the game and shows off cool stuff from elsewhere too. For details on how this was achieved, see the author's comments.

This video includes segments from some terrific games, including Pokémon Yellow, Crystal, and Gold, as well as from Super Mario Bros. Deluxe, Tetris, and The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening DX. Please check those games out.

This video includes music samples from The Orange Box soundtrack. If you've enjoyed what you've heard, you can purchase The Orange Box soundtrack from Amazon or iTunes.

This video includes a clip from SpongeBob SquarePants (season two), which can be purchased in its entirety from Amazon or iTunes.

Final Fantasy Adventure is the first game of the Seiken Densetsu (聖剣伝説) series, but it does contain some classic Final Fantasy elements. The series is probably best known for the SNES game Secret of Mana. This game was later remade on the Game Boy Advance as Sword of Mana. Its gameplay resembles that of a The Legend of Zelda game, but with level building.

In this run, Touch-me utilizes a glitch to warp across the map, cutting down the completion time by a lot compared to the warpless run. He also improves the previous run in this category by 51:22.56 minutes thanks to a big new warp glitch that allows him to reach the top of the Tower of Gemma early.

GB Final Fantasy Adventure (USA) "warpless" in 1:32:55.97 by Atomnium.

Final Fantasy Adventure is the first game in the Seiken Densetsu (聖剣伝説) series, a series best known for the Super Nintendo game Secret of Mana. It plays similarly to The Legend of Zelda, with some Final Fantasy elements added.

This run by Atomnium forgoes warps so as to show off more of the game. It also improves upon the previous run by 13.46 seconds thanks to improved manipulation and strategies.

Final Fantasy Legend II (Sa・Ga2 秘宝伝説, Sa・Ga2 - The Treasure Legend) is a role-playing game developed by Square and is the second game in the SaGa series. You take on the role of one of eight different characters of varying race and gender who leaves on a journey to find his or her lost father and recover the Magi, pieces of a magical statue of the goddess Isis.

In this run, knbnitkr abuses several glitches (including one which can only be performed on the initial Japanese release) to beat the game far quicker than intended. For more information, see the author's comments.

Kaeru no Tame ni Kane wa Naru (カエルの為に鐘は鳴る, "For the Frog the Bell Tolls") is a Japanese-only action-adventure game with RPG elements. In this funny, cool, and unique game, Prince Sabure is on a journey to save the Mille-Feuille Kingdom and its beautiful princess before his rival does. Along the way, he gains the ability to transform into a frog and a snake and can use these new powers to make it to the overtaken castle even faster.

Knight Quest is a rare RPG for the Game Boy. In it, you take control of a 14-year-old boy named Will who sets out to defeat baddies and save a princess. Nothing groundbreaking to see here, move along...

This run was created by DarkKobold while he was testing the game out as a potential candidate for Dream Team Contest 4. For more details, please see the author's notes.

Pokémon: Blue and Red Version are part of the first generation of the Pokémon franchise. They were developed by Game Freak and published by Nintendo in North America in 1998. They feature a 10-year old boy who ventures around the Kanto region and aim to become the Pokémon champion. During his journey, he encounters various monsters, which he can catch to use for battles, or just to fill up his Pokédex.

In this run, MrWint fills the Pokédex without resorting to any glitches and obtains the diploma in both games in less than four hours. Note that Mew isn't caught here; this is because it can only be obtained through either an event or glitches.
The official encodes feature commentary by the author as soft subtitles. In addition, the downloadable encodes feature additional audio tracks: The first (default) track features audio from both games, while the second and third tracks feature audio from Blue and Red, respectively.

There's also an alternate encode provided by the author which features a detailed overlay.

Ash reveals his dark side, using save corruption and direct memory manipulation to catch 64 of the 151 Pokémon in the blink of an eye. Then he beats the game in less than a minute (in-game time) - without ever leaving his own room, bypassing Professor Oak's speech and skipping right to the high praise for his impressive stats.

This run is so glitchy that it's near impossible to follow what's going on without help; reading the author's notes is highly recommended.

To see a run of the first generation of Pokémon that doesn't take advantage of save data corruption, watch this movie.

Note: Although this movie appears to be slower than the one it obsoleted, it is actually 66 frames faster. The reason for the slower time is that the emulator used in this run is more accurate and runs at the correct, slightly slower framerate.

In Rolan's Curse II, a single player takes control of a brave knight destined to once again destroy King Barius' forces and restore peace to Rolan. This time, however, the player can take along a number of items for a quick boost when they're in big trouble. The player can also level up, perform magic, and fly to certain points on the map. The player can also take along up to three allies and switch between them as the situation warrants.

The Final Fantasy Legend, known in Japan as Makai Toushi SaGa, is a video game released for the Game Boy in December 1989 by Square Co. It is the first game in the SaGa series and the first in the series for the Game Boy.

However, rather than engaging on a long quest of epic proportions, the author decides to just kick in the Japanese edition of the game and breeze through it in about a minute.

This run improves the predecessor movie by 36.61 seconds with new glitches and menuing optimizations.

Yuu Yuu Hakusho: Makai no Tobira is the third installment of the Yuu Yuu Hakusho series for the Game Boy. This game is unique because, unlike the other games, this isn't a fighter. This is a side-scrolling action RPG.

jlun2, with some tricks explained in his submission text, beats the game in less than 17 minutes.

Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles is an action role playing game developed by The Game Designers Studio and published by Square Enix in 2003 for the Nintendo GameCube. This was the first Final Fantasy game to include real-time fighting, which has since become a staple of Final Fantasy games. It was also the first Final Fantasy game to be published on a Nintendo console since Final Fantasy VI on the SNES.

Wobmiar completes the game while completing every dungeon in just under two hours.

Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door is an RPG made by Nintendo and is the second game in the Paper Mario series following Paper Mario for the Nintendo 64. It incorporates a world made of paper and turn-based battles, much like its predecessor. In it, Peach asks Mario to help find a treasure hidden in Rogueport. When he arrives, she is missing as usual, and he must collect 7 Crystal Stars to save her and open the Thousand-Year Door to collect the treasure.

Malleoz improved his previous TAS by nearly five minutes and thirty seconds with the new Hazard Respawn Glitch as well as an improved Palace Skip.

Cadash is a sword and sorcery video game which combines elements of both the role-playing video game genre and the platform genre. The game was originally released for Arcade machines by Taito in 1989, later ported to home video game consoles such as the TurboGrafx-16 in 1991, and the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis in 1992.

It isn't the most straightforward of platformers, seeing how you can actually gain levels and buy items in this one. There are also mandatory items to fetch and quests to complete in order to advance.

In this run, Challenger beats the predecessor movie from nifboy by 6:22.27 minutes. The improvement is so huge thanks to using 2 players, new tricks and glitches, better boss fights, and greater movement precision.

During the prolonged campaign known as the Goblin Wars, the Goblin Army gathered one night to amass a final assault upon Duke Hector Barrik's Castle. In the middle of this decisive battle, however, both armies were suddenly interrupted by a great earthquake as a vortex violently manifested itself in the midnight sky. Friend and foes alike were sucked up and taken into this void. On the other side, the Duke's Castle and its inhabitants mysteriously found themselves deposited within a hollow valley, securely guarded by impossibly high cliffs illuminated by a flaring red sun overhead. Per the Duke's urgent request, four adventurers are summoned and commissioned with the task of exploring this strange new land, in hopes of finding allies to establish trade with.

In ars4326's run, the ground work laid by the previous TASer, A Jesus Fan, is improved upon in this 7+ minute improvement. Most notably, only a single Thief is used throughout due to a programming exploit which allows him to inflict waves of constant critical damage while fighting in dungeons. In addition, a newly discovered reloading trick is used to skip the game's only required overworld fight in the Azcan Jungle. Also, new route strategies and movement optimizations are featured.

Finally, the ending input has been corrected to showcase the game's entire ending upon completing the final dungeon.

Fatal Labyrinth is an early Genesis turn-based dungeon crawler. It consists of 30 floors/levels and a final battle.

The object of each floor is to reach the stairs that take you up to the next floor. Normally this involves lots of exploring, collecting equipment, and fighting with numerous monsters; but, this being a TAS, you don't see so much of that.

At TASVideos, even 10 second long movies are improved, and game characters become so powerful they don't even have to move in order to complete the game.

This improvement is a result of the previous movie's author joining forces with the author of a VBA bot used in a glitched-out Pokémon TAS. Together they've managed to shorten the solution by 14 frames with the help of a similarly-designed bot for Gens.

Note that, while input length is 10 seconds long, less than 0.3 seconds of it is actual gameplay!

Landstalker is a challenging adventure RPG developed by Climax Entertainment (who also helped develop the Sega Shining series). You play as an adventure-seeking treasure hunter named Nigel, an elf who's remarkably young-looking for his age (88!). After completing his latest bounty, he runs into a wood nymph named Friday who's being pursued over her alleged knowledge of the whereabouts of King Nole's treasures. After helping her evade her pursuers, the two team up as they set off for Mercator Island in search of the fabled fortune.

Are King Nole's treasures truly close by? Are they ripe for the taking, or still jealously guarded to this day...?

In ars4326's run, 100% completion is based on RTA strats and is defined as follows:

Langrisser 2 (ラングリッサー2) is the acclaimed sequel to Warsong, never finding its way to an official release in English.

You are placed into the role of Elwin (descendent of Garrett/Redin), a wandering Swordsman who stops to rest from his journey at a small, obscure village. He soon finds himself, however, in a sudden conflict between an elite detachment of the Rayguard Empire and a peculiar young woman whom they are attempting to abduct. In desperation, her childhood friend Hein rushes toward Elwin and urgently pleads him to help fight off and thwart the Empire's plans. So much for rest...

Who is this young woman? Why is a major military power intent on capturing her? And what's this have to do with a legendary holy blade?

In ars4326's run, cunning strategy combines with heavy luck manipulation to produce a speedrun that completes all of the game's accessible stages (27 normal and 3 'hidden') in just under 2 hours. Virtually no level-grinding is found in this action-packed playthrough as Elwin & Co. seek to stop an Emperor's plans of uniting the continent with the power of an ancient demon sword!

The movie file and the primary downloadable (HQ) encode have the author's commentary as subtitles.

Madou Monogatari (魔導物語) is an RPG best described as 'strange'. The game has overly cute design and the battles are probably a little different than you would expect. The story revolves around a girl who is on a quest to pass her final exam in a magic school.

A defining moment is one of the cutscenes, where a slime is encountered and suddenly defeated by a strange girl bursting through a brick wall. Then, an equally strange armored knight drops in from the ceiling and the two of them proceed to ignore you and chase each other away.

The fast completion time is achieved mostly by using a random-effect spell, which has a small chance of producing a devastating elephant stomp (yeah, really). Naturally, in a TAS, the "small chance" gets a new meaning.

Might and Magic II: Gates to Another World is an RPG with some amazingly grand scope. Levels up to 255, hp to 65535, +63 weapons, battles with 255 opponents, time travel, and characters dying of old age.

This run takes care of money problems by finding a nameless, glitched party member and taking all his stuff. Teleportation is used in some places it normally can't be by resting to reset the forbidden flag. Walking backwards is employed when it reduces screen draw time. Temple blessings are used rather than a cleric, and items are used instead of a sorcerer.

Phantasy Star II, released in 1989, introduces us to the anti-utopian world of Mota, now dominated by the Mother Brain computer. Rolf, a government agent, is assigned the task of finding out why Mother Brain is malfunctioning, and yet his role in the destiny of Algo is far, far greater than anyone could imagine. Anyone, save one lone Esper. As the genetic construct Nei, the soldier Rudo, and others join him, can he topple the tyranny of Mother Brain and free Algo from an unholy evil?

Rolf and his friends, tired of all the violence they've seen, decide to take a pacifist route to save the Algol system with zero bloodshed. This run improves the old run by about 4 minutes through new glitches, including one that abuses the customized names of the characters to obtain some important items very early on. For more details, read the author's comments.

Phantasy Star III is often considered to be the black sheep of the series, but is still a unique RPG on its own, featuring 3 generations and multiple paths through the game. However, this run breaks the plot halfway through by glitching past the second generation quickly.

Like in other RPG runs, luck has been manipulated for many things. Although random encounters can't be completely avoided, no damage is ever taken except from bosses, and most of the leveling is done in a final rush.

Read the author's comments for more details on luck manipulation and the path taken through the game.

In this final installment of the famous Phantasy Star series, the protagonist, while out on a routine assignment, uncovers evidence pointing to a sinister threat to the entire solar system. One thing leads to another and he and the rest of his party eventually find themselves fighting the root of all evil. Such a quest would normally take at least ten hours, but with copious amounts of luck manipulation, it can be reduced to just under an hour and a half.

This is an improvement of about 1 minute and 48 seconds over the previous version by the same author.

In this final installment of the famous Phantasy Star series, the protagonist, while out on a routine assignment, uncovers evidence pointing to a sinister threat to the entire solar system. One thing leads to another and he and the rest of his party eventually find themselves fighting the root of all evil.

Even if killing the root of all evil would end everyone's problems, the team decides to take a few side jobs. As a result, they become even stronger and do things that would be impossible in a regular speedrun.

Genesis Phantasy Star IV (USA) "Blast from the Past" in 1:59:19.4 by janus.

In this final installment of the famous Phantasy Star series, the protagonist, while out on a routine assignment, uncovers evidence pointing to a sinister threat to the entire solar system. One thing leads to another and he and the rest of his party eventually find themselves fighting the root of all evil.

No reason to rush things though, right? In addition to completing all sidequests, the author also uncovers every single reference to Phantasy Star I and II in the game. An exhaustive list of these is found in the author's comments.

Shining Force is just under two hours of luck manipulation action. The random number generator is abused to the highest degree. The author used MATLAB, a math scripting language, to optimize the battle speeds.

This is a 4 minute 27 second improvement over the previous movie by the same author.

In this second game of the series, watch nearly three and a half hours of luck manipulation so intense that it took scripting and bot-work to perform most of it. Most of the bosses in the second half of the run die in one or two rounds.

This is an improvement of 15 minutes and 13 seconds over the previous movie, due to a variety of improvements, and in spite of playing on "Super" difficulty, which is functionally the highest difficulty level.

Sorcerer's Kingdom is a turn-based RPG published by Treco in 1992. In addition to an exceptional soundtrack, the game features a leveling system similar to Final Fantasy 2 (NES), in that your characters gain stats based on the actions they perform in combat. The plot places you in the role of a young man whose renowned father turns up missing after seeking to rid the Kingdom of an ultimate evil power. Desiring to follow in his footsteps, the lad seeks an audience with the King to set out as an adventurer, himself.

Normally, this game requires ample amounts of grinding up your OFFENSE stat in order to damage bosses. ars4326's run minimizes this aspect down to its bare requirements, by using heavy luck manipulation and exploiting the game's leveling system. In doing so, the final boss is slain in just under one hour. Not bad for a day's work!

Originally known as Minato no Traysia (港のトレイジア) in Japan, this turn-based RPG adventure doesn’t involve the typical ‘save the world’ or ‘vanquish the ultimate evil’ plotline. Not this time around. It’s actually themed around a young man’s sweetheart named Traysia, as he sets out from his hometown to fulfill his dream of exploring the world (vanquishing evil is involved, however).

ars4326’s run showcases two noteworthy features in this TAS. Not a single random encounter is fought, and all boss battles are blitzed through by abusing a party member’s rapid attack animation. At times, the game may remind you of a pseudo-shooter instead of a traditional RPG.

In this traditional strategy RPG, every stage normally has to be approached carefully and with a full stock of troops. All of that was cast aside in ars4326's run, where extreme luck manipulation became the driving force in obtaining victory after unlikely victory. Garett's team operated as a virtual skeleton crew as only the bare minimum of resources were deployed in his struggle against the Dalsis Empire and a foreboding, ancient evil.

Ys III - Wanderers from Ys is the third installment in the Ys series, taking place three years after the events of the first two. Unlike the previous two's top-down perspective, this game is a sidescroller.

In this run, The8bitbeast beats the game in record time via the use of a glitch to give the player maxed out stats. For more information, see the submission comments.

Paper Mario, first released in Japan in August of 2000, is a role-playing game for the Nintendo 64. Bowser has kidnapped Princess Peach and stolen the Star Rod, which allows him to grant himself any wish. To counteract the power of the Star Rod, Mario must locate the seven Star Spirits, who can combine their power to stop Bowser's evil plans.

Numerous tricks and glitches allow a tool-assisted speedrun to skip large portions of the game and beat it impressively quickly. See the author's comments for more on this.

Downloadable encodes include the author's commentary as soft subtitles and also an additional audio commentary with the encodes. There is also a live commentary by the author and iateyourpie. A second YouTube stream is available with an informative overlay.

Paper Mario, first released in Japan in August of 2000, is a role-playing game for the Nintendo 64. Bowser has kidnapped Princess Peach and stolen the Star Rod, which allows him to grant himself any wish. To counteract the power of the Star Rod, Mario must locate the seven Star Spirits, who can combine their power to stop Bowser's evil plans.

Malleoz aims to collect all the star spirit cards by heavily manipulating luck and impressively abusing programming errors and loading zones, making this run a whirlwind of entertainment and speed. For a detailed explanation of the tricks used in this run, see the author's submission notes.

You can also see this game beaten by the same author in the fastest time possible here.

Heroes of the Lance is based on the first Dragonlance campaign and novel. The party journeys through the ruined city of Xak Tsaroth, face the ancient dragon Khisanth and retrieve the Disks of Mishakal. The interface is setup as a side scroller and only one member of the party is controlled at once.

In the run Randil blitzes through everything, not taking the time to kill or even hit any of the regular enemies. The spell being cast most of the time is Protection From Evil. This creates short term invulnerability and allows for jumping through enemies.

If science fiction is to be believed, the ultimate evolution for biological beings is to discard the physical body and become an entity of pure energy. For video game characters, it seems to be the ability to zip through walls.
In this latest TAS by zggzdydp, Simon Belmont joins the league of characters possessing this ability.

Castlevania II: Simon's Quest is the story of Simon's horrible weekend
without sleep. Two years after defeating Dracula, the hero is physically
weakened by Dracula's curse. He must gather Dracula's remains and
incinerate them at the ruins of Castlevania in order to end the curse.

This movie is 85 seconds faster than the previous effort by the same author. We recommend to read his comments for explanations on how this improvement was achieved.

Crystalis is an awesome action rpg by SNK. What little plot there is involves the world ending on October 1, 1997. Naturally, after that the world became full of mutants and monsters. Technology regresses and people can use magic. There is an evil empire trying to revive the ancient technology, specifically the obligatory tower floating in the sky. The hero pops out of some sort of stasis chamber and proceeds to topple the empire and take down the tower with the help of some wise men and a friendly dolphin. There's a heroine named Mesia, but she only shows up a few times, most of which are skipped in this run.

This beats the previous run by almost 12 minutes. As with that run, the second-controller cheats are off-limits (the fm2 only has data for controller 1). Other than that, no holds are barred. Many new glitches are used. For a complete list, see the game resources page. Movement is faster by abusing the no-subpixel engine. Much effort went into lag reduction, especially in certain areas. However, the vast majority of the time savings is due to better experience management.
We recommend watching the movie on an emulator and using the author's LUA script. There's quite a bit of useful information.

Destiny of an Emperor was Capcom’s first RPG, released in 1989-90, and is based on Romance of the Three Kingdoms.

The battling style of this game can be described like Final Fantasy meets Pokémon; your team of warriors versus the opposing team of warriors, and any opponents freed from their posts can be later picked up in the wilds and converted to your side!

Double Moon Densetsu (ダブルムーン伝説 Legend of the Double Moon) is a 1992 turn-based NES RPG. The author uses a complex memory corruption glitch to skip many events, slimming this normally long RPG down to under 20 minutes. Technical details about the glitches used are in the author's comments.

This is the sixth published movie of Dragon Warrior, a seemingly complex, but ultimately, fairly simple NES RPG. This is an improvement of 20.96 seconds from the previous run. The character completes his quest at Level 7. There are several things about this movie that might seem odd if one is not aware of them beforehand:

All unnecessary random encounters have been manipulated into not happening

The player dies several times in order to get transported back to the beginning

Action commands are often intentionally not entered as soon as possible to manipulate critical hits and such

Dragon Warrior is an epic RPG series which now spans 8 games across many systems.
The second game greatly expands on the first to include a party of three heroes
(all descendents of Erdrick and the hero of DW1) and battles that may include
many enemies.
The world is much bigger and there are many big dungeons to explore as well.
Luckily there are new abilities and items to make this easier.
Enemies can randomly drop items when defeated and there is a lottery which
is the precursor to the casinos which appear in each later DW game.
Finally, you might notice that many of the enemies in this game appear
in later games, particularly DW8.

The last in the original Dragon Warrior storyline, this one follows "the Hero", who is tasked with saving the world from the archfiend Baramos. After cobbling together a group of people to take with him, the Hero must travel the world to find a way to Baramos's lair.

Or at least, that was what was supposed to happen. Thanks to a glitch involving a party of dead characters, vaxherd manages to manipulate his inventory and warp list to not only have extremely rare pieces of equipment from nothing, but also warps directly to where Baramos is located in a fraction of the time it would take normally.

In addition to this, vaxherd also uses a glitch involving resets and character names to manipulate the RNG and encounter formula at certain points, thereby beating the previous run by over seven minutes.
The encodes feature commentary by the author as soft subtitles.

This is a non-glitched run of Dragon Warrior 3, now under 2 hours long.

This game is known in the TAS world as being a pain to play due to the RNG (random number generator) being much harder to manipulate than most other games. As a result, seemingly random actions throughout the game are actually intentional manipulation of the RNG to ensure favourable outcomes, such as avoiding monsters or good battle outcomes.

To give you an idea of how surprising this time is to most players, the previous run is about 24 minutes longer than this one. Even before that, any run that was under 3 hours long was deemed to be very difficult to perform.

After hearing about how the dark overlord Darces has returned, our hero goes on a quest to unite all five one elements in order to defeat Darces and save the kingdom.

In this storybook-view RPG, the author zooms around the game world, entering the most dangerous of dungeons, killing two powerful monsters, and collecting the bare minimum needed to beat the game in incredible fashion. Despite the player being unable to survive one hit, the author subverts certain death with the handy pause system. Despite the player supposedly being unable to damage the monsters, an underflow glitch allows for massive damage. Despite the final boss standing right there to kill him, the viewer sees all of 3 frames of the dark overlord. It's an RPG done in just over one minute, without warping or save glitching.

EarthBound Beginnings is the first game in the Mother/EarthBound series, known simply as Mother in Japan. It was localized for a 1990 US release, but wasn't released outside Japan until 2015. During that time, the original localized title, "EarthBound", was used for the English release of Mother 2.

Long referred to as "EarthBound Zero" by fans, the game was finally given an official title for its Wii U eShop release.

This movie is done on the US prototype, which does not have the "bread crumbs" glitch used in our other movie of the game. It does, however, have a run button, which means this movie may seem faster at times, even though it's a lot longer.

This is the JPN version of EarthBound Beginnings (also known as Mother (マザー) ). As the first version of the game, it has a number of useful glitches; this run abuses the way the game handles the "Bread crumbs" item to warp off the edge of reality and casually walk straight into the final boss's lair under a second faster than the previous run.

The original Final Fantasy follows four heroes who are trying to restore the four orbs which have been contaminated and ultimately defeat Chaos.

Unfortunately only one of the warriors is actually a hero; the rest are sissies who die early on during the quests. Strange as this may sound, much time is saved by doing so since fewer commands need to be entered every time the player runs from a random encounter.

On TASVideos, perfect runs are continually improved, often through very unexpected changes. This run by TheAxeMan improves the old TAS by 9.11 seconds by getting lower stats and spending more time at inns and item shops.

For those who think they have a better sense of humor than the author, he has provided Python scripts which allow you to recreate the entire run with your own choices for character names substituted for his. Available as a Windows standalone program or as source.
The downloadable videos and the YouTube stream contain soft subtitles with commentary from TheAxeMan.

Final Fantasy is a well known RPG about saving the world with the usual assortment of characters.

Here, the author defies all common sense and takes a team composed entirely of White Mages, the token "weak healing caster" class. What's worse, three of them meet their untimely demise at the hands of pirates not very far into their journey. Not to worry, because this survivor has a few tricks up her sleeve.

The world is veiled in darkness. Winds don't blow, the seas are stormy, and the earth rots. All people can hope for is that the ancient prophecy will be finally fulfilled. "When the world is veiled in darkness, four warriors will come..." And indeed, they come - the four characters you have previously chosen. Their first quest is to free a princess from the evil knight Garland, and then the real journey begins.

... or that was the intention, anyway. Instead, the heroes walk up and down some stairs, talk to a random person in the castle, and the final boss conveniently shows up.

Final Fantasy III was the second of two Final Fantasy NES games to be released only in Japan, leading to the fourth game in the series being released to the rest of the world as Final Fantasy II. The game brings back the experience point system from the first game while changing up the character jobs formula by allowing the player to change a character's class mid-game as well as acquire new and advanced classes.

In this movie, the author, AmaizumiUni, abuses a bug that causes character inventory to overflow, corrupting the game's memory and triggering the credits early.

Hydlide is an old and somewhat notorious game, mostly because it has very strange gameplay mechanics. For the first part of the game, walking consumes health, and the character must stop every now and then to regain it.

This is one of the few games (the only one?) where the level grinding sequences are actually entertaining, while the boss fights aren't. Hitting a boss decreases your own health as well as the boss's, after which there is much waiting for more health until you can hit him again.

This is an improvement of 3:54.79 over the previous TAS, due to overall better levelling strategy and route planning.

There is also a submitted TAS that uses codes and removes the need to level grind or wait for health.

'Lagrange Point' (ラグランジュポイント), is a very late (as in, released in 1991) Japanese-only RPG produced for the NES. This game is notable because Konami teamed up with readers of Family Computer Magazine (ファミリーコンピュータマガジン) to form a group, called 芸夢工房 (geimukoubou, art dream workshop), in order to make this game. The readers were permitted to design the characters, monsters, events, message-texts, music, the title-screen, and such. With enhanced sound for the NES due to Konami's VRC7 sound generator Integrated Circuit, the game is considered a masterpiece to many Japanese people.

The story is about a pilot, Jin (also known as Gin), who is exploring a biohazard outbreak at a space colony, linked to the disappearance of Dr. Stolte. He arrives, only for the spaceship to be attacked. The effect of the outbreak soon becomes clear.

Meet Paul -- A guy who starves to death five minutes after a grand meal. He also feels experienced from doing trivial things like entering a store or delivering mail.

While many heroes would depend on hours of fighting for experience, Paul instead gets his experience from those trivial things in order to defeat Abadon in a timely manner. Best ending requires all such trivial tasks done, ensuring you see Paul gaining experience from delivering a letter or talking to a tree.

Along the way, there are vicious enemies who beat up Paul. Being in a hurry, Paul doesn't stop for them, preferring to use the UNKNOWN spell to patch himself up. Normally this has a high chance of killing Paul in some of the most gruesome or comical ways possible, but instead it is manipulated to heal him.

This beats the authors previous run by a little over 38 seconds, primarily due to a new route.

Reading the author's comments is recommended.
This movie features commentary by the author, which has been added to the encode in the form of soft subtitles. If watching embedded stream via Archive.org, you can press the nearly invisible commentary button on the top right corner to see the commentary.

In Metal Max, a mysterious war known as "The Havoc" has almost destroyed the human civilization. It's unknown how it broke out, and no one even dares to find out. The few who are left have to struggle to survive. Among them is our young hero, E, who just makes his decision to become a great Hunter.

Released by Data East in Japan in 1991, Metal Max was one of the more "creative" console role-playing games due to more freedom in the story. The game is set in a post-apocalyptic future, in which surviving people cluster from villages to ruins, while some Hunters among them fight monsters and outlaws in the "wild".

In this run, suwei improves the previous run by 50.66 seconds by using "dud" shells instead of panic shells and buying the teleport item from a different place.

Might and Magic, released in 1986, was the first installment in the series that would later evolve into a whole fictional universe, encompassing both the actual M&M games and a multitude of subseries and spin-offs made in their own genres, including King's Bounty, Heroes of Might & Magic, and others.

Normally, this game is rather long. This movie by Dammit skips most of it by using a glitch that allows the player to get all the important items in a matter of a few minutes.

We strongly recommend reading the author's comments for further details and explanations. The primary downloadable (HQ) encode has the author's commentary as subtitles.

Nobunaga's Ambition (信長の野望) is a turn-based strategy role-playing simulation video game. One of the first games in its genre, it was first released in March 1983 by the Japanese video game developer Koei.

Here CogneatoSwitch strategizes and luck manipulates around many obstacles, beating an hours long game in 12 minutes.
Downloadable encodes have the author's commentary as soft subtitles.

Rygar is an action game involving a hero with a shield as a weapon. Normally, the
hero must obtain items, such as a grappling hook, to be able to explore the world of
Garloz, and he must also defeat five bosses to gain access to the final area.
However, these requirements can be circumvented with glitches. Indeed, this run
kills no bosses except the final boss and does very little leveling.

In contrast to the any% run and the warpless run, which use the
European version of Rygar, this movie uses the American version. The two ROM
versions have some different glitches. For more details about the ROM choice, as
well as some background explaining what in the world is going on here, see the movie
comments as well as our Rygar tricks page.

This movie completes the PAL version of Rygar with only one item, the grappling hook. It also uses a warp glitch to skip forward in the game as well as many smaller tricks.

It is an improvement of 65.58 seconds to the previous movie by Walker Boh – this time played by Lord Tom.

Although the route in this movie is almost exactly the same, time was saved mostly by accumulating the tone points (for Rygar's strength) a lot faster. There were other improvements as well. We recommend reading the author's comments for more details.
Note: If you are watching the FCM, don't forget to enable PAL emulation in FCEU! It's under the Config menu.

This movie is different from the other Rygar movie
in that it plays all levels and doesn't use any glitch to warp from a boss battle to another.

Aside from that limitation, this movie makes full use of all the bugs and glitches in the game
which can be used to speed up the run.
If you are wondering what really is going on in this movie,
see the Rygar Tricks page for some info about the tricks used.

This is a 4 minutes and 43.38 seconds improvement to the previous movie.

Note: If you are watching the FCM, don't forget to enable PAL emulation in FCEU! It's under the Config menu.

Sweet Home is a survival horror RPG developed by Capcom for the Famicom. It is based on the Japanese horror film of the same name. The game is sometimes perceived as the original survival horror game, and was a prototype of the Resident Evil series.

The Magic of Scheherazade is an action role-playing video game for the Family Computer and Nintendo Entertainment System, released by Culture Brain in 1987 in Japan and 1989 in North America. The story involves the player character, who suffers from amnesia, traveling through time in an attempt to rescue Princess Scheherazade from the evil wizard Sabaron, who has summoned the demon Goragora to do his bidding.

Following the defeat of the evil triad in the previous three Ultima games, the world of Sosaria changed beyond recognition: continents rose and sank, and new cities were built, heralding the advent of a different civilization. Unified by the reign of the benevolent monarch Lord British, the new world was renamed Britannia. Lord British wished to base people's well-being on the ethical principles of Truth, Love, and Courage, proclaiming the Eight Virtues (Honesty, Compassion, Valor, Justice, Sacrifice, Honor, Spirituality, and Humility) as the ideal everyone should strive for. The person who could accomplish full understanding and realization of these virtues would serve as a spiritual leader and a moral example for the inhabitants of Britannia; he alone would be able to obtain holy artifacts, descend into the Stygian Abyss, and access the Codex of Ultimate Wisdom. This person is the Avatar.

Note: The second YouTube stream has the dungeons lighted up.

The fm2 file has the author's commentary embedded, and the downloadable encode files have them as soft subtitles.

NES Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord (USA) in 00:45.82 by TaoTao.

One of a few dungeon crawlers on this site. The player's team of a couple characters travels through a dungeon at breakneck speed, obtaining the minimum necessary to destroy the evil wizard, then leaving.

A great amount of luck-manipulation was required; so much that TaoTao used a bot to do parts of this run. That's why the rerecord count says 200000. The number of manual rerecords is around 1000.

NES Wizardry II: The Knight of Diamonds (USA) in 01:11.32 by MiezaruMono.

This game, the second in the series, is the direct sequel to Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord. Here, the heroes thoroughly explore a dungeon to collect five pieces of the mystical equipment of the Knight of Diamonds to trade for the "Staff of Gnilda" to save the kingdom. With the aid of heavy luck manipulation, the average viewer will have absolutely no idea what is going on as the heroes blaze through the dungeon, score every critical hit known to adventurer-kind, and walk away from this normally hours-long game in the span of two minutes.

A bot was used to create large portions of this run; as such, the rerecord count has been removed from the submission entry.

This is an improvement of 90 frames from the previous movie done by the same author.

Although Legacy of Llylgamyn is the third game in the Wizardry series, it was released second for the NES because Knight of Diamonds, the actual second game, was deemed to be too difficult for beginners (though it was, eventually, released for the NES as well).

Here, the object of the quest, the Orb of Earithin, mysteriously appears in a shop by way of a lost battle and a glitch involving the occasional result thereof of causing a character to be lost in the dungeon, bringing the quest to a close impossibly quickly.

Here is a warpless run of Zelda II: The Adventure of Link (1988), which introduced RPG elements and a side-scrolling view instead the traditional Zelda overhead view. An evil magician has cast a sleep spell on Princess Zelda. Link must place 6 crystals in palaces throughout Hyrule in order to release the binding force that protects the Triforce of Courage hidden in the Great Palace.

This movie is an improvement of 9.31 seconds compared to the previous run. Most of the new time saved is from getting almost impossible fairy spawns at overworld traps. Please read the authors' comments for details.

This movie avoids using the extremely gamebreaking hyperspeed and scroll-lock glitches seen in the warp glitch branch. This movie also avoids all of the minorly gamebreaking wrong warps in order to significantly increase the technical skill required to create the movie; we also have a movie which does use these "glitched warps," which allows a rather different route through the game.

This movie was a part of a two-hour Zelda II TAS showcase with audio commentary by Arc, Inzult, Jackimus, Mithical9, and Feasel.

Zelda II: The Adventure of Link is quite different from most of the early games in the Legend of Zelda series. It combines an overworld view with side-scrolling platform stages. In addition, the character can gain experience and levels, visit towns, and earn spells and items which are needed to proceed.

Zelda II: The Adventure of Link is quite different from most of the early games in the Legend of Zelda series. It combines an overworld view with side-scrolling platform stages. In addition, the character can gain experience and levels, visit towns, and earn spells and items which are needed to proceed.

However, the game also has a large glitch which produces massive speed when both Left and Right are pressed at the same time; due to the use of this and other glitches, most of this run features Link racing across Hyrule so fast that the screen can't keep up, and inexplicably warping between places that shouldn't be connected. Only a few items and one spell are collected, and the only enemy ever fought is the final boss. Luckily, he takes the same amount of damage no matter what level attack you have.

We also have a run that completes the six palaces without using the Left + Right glitch to turn the game into a barely comprehensible mess (but does allow the use of glitched warps) and another run that disallows both the Left + Right glitch and the use of glitched warps.

This movie was a part of a two-hour Zelda II TAS showcase with audio commentary by Arc, Inzult, Jackimus, Mithical9, and Feasel.

Dungeon Explorer is based off of Gauntlet, but adds a plot, bosses, magic spells and RPG elements. Notably, it also one-ups Gauntlet by allowing for five players.

The author races through the dungeons with all five players, making short work of bosses. The five characters were selected for their high starting agility, and include a fighter (blue), a warlock (purple), an elf (green), a bard (orange), and a thief (red).

Also, the only exit that matters is the last one used by a player, and the author uses this extensively to use the fastest character, the thief, to run when an earlier exit is available for the other characters to use.
A technical commentary with extra features by the author is available here.

Monster Pro Wrestling is a Japanese game in which you choose a monster and battle other monsters in turn-based battles. It is notable for its humorously nonsensical battle animations, such as the appearance of a dozen heads on screen and death blows literally tearing monsters apart.

In this movie, Aqfaq uses well-planned strategy and a fair amount of luck manipulation to defeat each monster in the fewest rounds possible. For more information, check out his detailed submission text.

Azure Dreams is an RPG random dungeon crawler where the main character, Koh, can recruit familiars and level them up in the 40-floor Monster Tower, while gaining items and riches. He can also help the local town and romance some girls.

As can be seen from the movie time, none of this occurs in this TAS. It's just one naked dash to the top and a whole bunch of fortuitous circumstances. Luck manipulation was used on almost every floor to ensure that elevators and helpful traps are strategically located.

Should you decide to play Azure Dreams, this is definitely the wrong way to play the game.

The Brood, an ancient race of dragons, is all but extinct. Their power was so strong that they had to be killed. A (as Ryu is named in this run), the last one of the Brood, is awakened after 400 years and decides he wants to know more about his people.

Well aware of his fearful power, A uses it until he becomes strong enough to rely on his physical power, after which he manipulates luck to an indecent extent, using frame-by-frame advancing to pulverize his foes and even the final boss. It may be a little anti-climactic, but it's much quicker this way.

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night is the first installment of the Castlevania series on PSX, and was also the very first PSX game to have a published TAS.

Follow Richter (playable after you beat the game once) as he glitches and speeds through the castle on a quest to defeat Dracula. If you like fast sliding, dashing, uppercutting, and using precipitation to defeat bosses, you'll love this run.

Not only was Castlevania: Symphony of the Night the first installment of the Castlevania series on PSX but also the first PSX game to have a published run here. Follow Dracula's son Alucard as he glitches through the castle on a quest to end his father's life.

ForgoneMoose manages to improve the previous run by 21.55 seconds due to better luck manipulation and movement technique.

A run that beats the game even faster through save data corruption is available here, and a 100% run covering the whole castle can be found here. If you prefer the main character to have muscular bare arms and to pray to the rain gods to defeat bosses, you may enjoy the Richter version. If you want to see a run on Replay mode that can skip many cutscenes, see this run.

PSX Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (USA) "Replay Mode" in 12:44.25 by ForgoneMoose.

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night is the first installment of the Castlevania series on PSX. Follow Dracula's son Alucard as he glitches through the castle on a quest to end his father's life.

This run is played on a Replay save file (not newgame+ because neither experience nor items are carried over) using the Luck Mode command. Using Replay allows the player to skip most cutscenes and alters what the librarian can sell. Using Luck Mode lowers the player's base strength which, among other changes, ironically makes the run faster by enabling a route filled with kicking enemies that wouldn't be possible otherwise.

A run that beats the game through save data corruption is available here. If you prefer the main character to have muscular bare arms and to pray to the rain gods to defeat bosses, you may enjoy the Richter version. If you want to see a run that beats every boss, see this run. We also have a run of the Saturn version using Maria. We even have a run where Alucard avoids killing everything except Dracula.

Not only was Castlevania: Symphony of the Night the first installment of the Castlevania series on PSX but also the first PSX game to have a published run here. Follow Dracula's son Alucard as he glitches through the castle on a quest to end his father's life.

This run beats the game at level 1 with 0 experience, and the only official (recorded in the bestiary) kill being Dracula. A few other enemies are killed using a glitch to avoid the kill being recorded or experience being awarded.

Not only was Castlevania: Symphony of the Night the first installment of the Castlevania series on PSX but also the first PSX game to have a published run here.

Not satisfied with just going on a death spree to Dracula, Alucard decides to steal every single one of his father's heirlooms, while also killing his prized collection of monsters. Luckily he has the handy ability of phasing through walls whenever he needs to.

A run that beats the game through save data corruption is available here, along with one that avoids data corruption. If you prefer the main character to have muscular bare arms and to pray to the rain gods to defeat bosses, you may enjoy the Richter version. If you want to see a run on Replay mode that can skip many cutscenes, see this run. We also have a run of the Saturn version using Maria. We even have a run where Alucard avoids killing everything except Dracula.

Author's commentary during the run's video can be watched on YouTube.
Note: Due to the lengthy amount of time needed to obtain the best ending in the previous run, this run was deemed significantly more entertaining, and thus obsoletes it.

PSX Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (USA) "game end glitch" in 09:47.2 by ForgoneMoose & sockfolder.

Not only was Castlevania: Symphony of the Night the first installment of the Castlevania series on PSX but also the first PSX game to have a published run here. Follow Dracula's son Alucard as he glitches through the castle on a quest to end his father's life.

ForgoneMoose and sockfolder, by corrupting the save data, manage to corrupt the memory and go straight to the ending, totally skipping Richter and the whole second castle.

A 100% run covering the whole castle is also available here. If you prefer the main character to have muscular bare arms and to pray to the rain gods to defeat bosses, you may enjoy the Richter version. If you want to see a run on Replay mode that can skip many cutscenes, see this run. A run with clear save without memory corruption is also available here.

Chocobo no Fushigi na Dungeon (チョコボの不思議なダンジョン) is a dungeon crawler starring everyone's favorite Final Fantasy transportation. It was only released in Japan, although a sequel, Chocobo's Dungeon 2, was released in the USA too.

The author uses luck manipulation to get favorable floor layouts, descending rapidly through the dungeons while still collecting items needed to kill bosses.

Ehrgeiz - God Bless the Ring is a game with two main modes. The first mode is a 3D fighting game, which is primarily known for including characters from Final Fantasy 7. The PlayStation-exclusive second mode, Quest Mode, is a dungeon-crawling RPG, where randomly generated floor layouts and dropped item probabilities make the game different every time you play.

This run plays through Quest Mode, using lots of luck manipulation to get very short floor layouts. (As a commenter noted in the discussion thread, the game may be more aptly called "God Bless the RNG".)

This is the much-anticipated tool-assisted speedrun of the ninth installment in the Final Fantasy series (and the last to be made for the PSX). With its many references to the older games, it's a trip down memory lane for those familiar with the series.

This run completes the famous Excalibur II quest, which requires the player to get to the end of the game in under 12 hours, with over 4 hours and 40 minutes to spare. For more details on the low completion time and the extensive route planning put into this run, we recommend reading the author's comments.

Both the MKVs and YouTube encodes have explanatory subtitles to read while watching.

Note: Due to an emulation error, some areas have rather loud background sound effects (like Alexandria during Vivi's first appearance).

Final Fantasy VIII (1999) marked a significant departure from earlier Squaresoft titles — it was their first game to have realistically proportioned characters and did away with much of the traditional gameplay systems used by earlier titles. Additionally, it is the first Final Fantasy to focus on a love story.

Blue the magic user has been tasked with the sad task of tracking down and killing his twin brother, Rouge. Along the way he comes to terms with some uncomfortable truths and gains a variety of powerful spells. Eventually he confronts Rouge and ... loses? Thereafter, things get very weird and eventually all is revealed to be... well, vastly complicated.

In this run, only the bare essentials are carried out, and many of the required battles are performed in an incredibly short span of time.

What does Lute the bard do when his mother kicks him out? Go on an adventure, of course! In this run, the author travels to various places, collecting items and people, before setting out to avenge his father (that he himself didn't even know about). The author also makes use of big combination attacks that not only deal a lot of damage, but make for a very pretty light show.

Tear Ring Saga:Yutona Eiyū Senki, as described by Wikipedia, is a game in the vein of Fire Emblem, created by Shouzou Kaga (Fire Emblem's creator) after his departure from Nintendo and their development house Intelligent Systems.

lapogne36 takes the game apart in a bit over three hours, thanks to a large dose of luck manipulation.

Tobal 2 is a 3D fighting game developed by Dream Factory and released by Square in Japan in 1997. Unlike its predecessor, Tobal No. 1, this game was not released in North America or PAL regions. There are four modes in the game: Tournament, VS, Training, and Quest.

In Quest mode, dungeons as well as a whole town are freely explorable. It also features role-playing elements and the ability to capture encountered monsters and use them as playable characters in VS Mode. This brings the amount of playable characters in this game to as high as 200.

In preparation for Ragnarok, the final battle between the gods, Odin has commanded Lenneth Valkyrie to descend to the lower world and gather the souls of fallen heroes to serve as soldiers in the approaching conflict. The player controls Lenneth, gathering soldiers and training them to be transferred to the battlefields of the gods.

..except N?K does none of that, instead accessing the debug room through corrupting the save file on the memory card due to resetting the console while saving, and thus ends the game in record time.

Wild Arms is a Western-themed role-playing video game developed by Japanese company Media.Vision. Originally released in Japan in 1996 for the PlayStation, it was later translated and released in North America in 1997 and Europe in 1998 by Sony Computer Entertainment. It is noteworthy for being one of the first role-playing video games on the PlayStation, as well as one of the few to feature a Western American setting and motif. The game features 2D computer graphics for normal gameplay, while battle sequences are rendered in 3D.

Taking place in the fantasy world of Filgaia, Wild Arms follows the adventures of a band of miscreants and adventurers called Dream Chasers who scour the world in search of excitement and fortune. The player assumes control of a young boy named Rudy who has the ability to operate powerful weapons called Ancient Relic Machines (ARMs), forbidden remnants of a lost age that resemble firearms. Along with his companions Jack and Cecilia, the group must use their respective skills to navigate through the vast wastelands and dungeons of Filgaia and prevent an otherworldly threat from reviving their lost leader and destroying the world.

While this movie played by lapogne36 features a lot of heavy glitches, it still avoids the arbitrary code execution techniques that could have made the movie way shorter, but probably less entertaining as a whole.

The balance in the magical world of Cefiro is supported by the prayers of the lovely princess Emerald. When the evil Sage Master imprisoned her, the existence of the entire world was endangered. Using her spiritual powers, the princess contacted three Japanese high-school girls, Hikaru, Umi, and Fuu, turned them into Magic Knights, and summoned them to Cefiro, where their goal is to save her and to restore the balance.

Magic Knight Rayearth is a game developed by Sega AM7 R&D Division and published by Working Designs (whilst upping the difficulty a notch and botching the translation in the process) in North America in November 1998, making it the final Sega Saturn game released in North America.

Mitjitsu improves the previous TAS by a tremendous 13 minutes and 58.1 seconds, mainly thanks to exploiting the infinite magic trick, allowing the game's most powerful spell to be used infinitely even when not meeting the required mana costs.

Rumor says that the legendary Black Onyx, an artifact that grants eternal youth and happiness to those who can find it, lies within the Black Tower near the town of Utsuro. You assemble a party of brave adventurers and venture into the tower, defeating monsters on your way to the great treasure. ruadath gets to the treasure in just 41 seconds, moving through the rooms with godlike speed.

The Black Onyx is one of the first traditional role-playing games made by a Japanese company. It is similar in gameplay to early Wizardry and Ultima games with killing monsters and exploring dungeons, with dark, realistic visuals. The player creates a party (up to five members) and explores a maze-like 3D dungeon, fighting random enemies on the way. The heroes also meet adventurers who can be convinced to join the party. The combat engine is turn-based.

Dragon Crystal is an early Roguelike RPG in the vein of Fatal Labyrinth and Azure Dreams, thus it's naturally vulnerable to the same type of luck manipulation in its random level generation to allow the protagonist to miraculously find stairs up in the opening area of each floor and complete the game in record time.

Challenger's improves upon the previous run by 16.37 seconds through making use of the pause button in order to manipulate better luck.

The original Phantasy Star is one of the pioneers of console RPGs, featuring fully traversible overworld maps, random enemy encounters, and turn-based battles. It was also one of the first games to feature a female protagonist.

One peaceful day in Algol, the benevolent King Lassic decides to convert to a new religion. Unfortunately, this new faith turns him into a cruel dictator who silences all who go against him. When Alis' brother tries to rebel, he is killed by Lassic's robot-cops. After seeing this, Alis sets out to stop him, not only to get revenge, but also to liberate the people from the King's oppressive rule.
This movie contains long leveling-up sequences from 47:26-1:09:40 and 1:16:56-1:40:45. You may want to skip them.

SMS Ys: The Vanished Omens (USA/Europe) "game end glitch" in 00:17.11 by JohnUK89.

Ys: The Vanished Omens is the first in a long series of role-playing games. Young swordsman Adol Christin has arrived in the town of Minea, only to find that a great evil is sweeping the land. He must seek out the six books of Ys and use the knowledge they contain to defeat the evil forces.

But after our hero visits a nearby shop, the shopkeeper decides he likes him and gives him his personal copies of all the books of Ys to complete his quest.

In this run, JohnUK89 improves upon the previous run by 21 frames by walking further down the screen, which makes going into the menu unnecessary.

You control Varik (Ares in the Japanese version, which this TAS is on), who fell down into the ruins when Alexis chased him down and accidentally blew a hole in the ground. Now it's up to you to get Varik (Ares) back out, with no shortage of monsters along the way. You're not alone - There are many others who have also fallen, and are willing to sell items that may help you.

The game is in a top-down view, monsters move about in real time, and the game certainly has RPG elements in that you level up from defeating these monsters. You have three stats that increase separately from level, gaining strength by physically attacking, knowledge by hitting with attack spells, and magic endurance by being hit with magic. The controls are difficult to figure out, with one aspect being the same button that brings up your shield will also attack if you're standing in front of a monster, but once you figure it out, it's not that bad. To reach the end, you travel through over 40 zones, each bearing their various challenges with monsters or traps, and the occasional puzzle.

Osse101 improves the previous TAS by 27 minutes and 30.22 seconds, thanks to various glitches that are only possible on the Japanese version. Please read the submission comments for more details.

Breath of Fire was Capcom's first traditional RPG. It follows a boy named Ryu, one of the last surviving members of an ancient race with the ability to transform into mighty dragons, as he searches the world for his sister. Along the way, Ryu meets other warriors who share his quest and comes into conflict with the Dark Dragon Clan, a militaristic empire who seeks to take over the world by reviving a mad goddess.

Using a whole lot of planning and luck manipulation, janus completes this long game in just under four and a quarter hours.

Chrono Trigger is one of the most dearly loved games from the SNES library. In it, you play as Crono and set off on a journey through time to save the world from the villainous Lavos.

The game can be ripped apart in a matter of minutes through advanced save corruption techniques, but in this movie the author forgoes this exploit in order to play through more of the game, and does so in barely more than half the time of the last run in the same category. Don't expect this run-through to follow a coherent narrative any time soon, though — it still skips quite a lot of content.

From the opposite side of the usual formula of breaking a game to reach the credits as fast as possible, Saturn finishes Chrono Trigger in a single pass while trying to get as much done as possible without glitching the game out and spending too much time grinding. Consequently this video actually looks like an otherwise normal playthrough by an extremely skilled player.

This run aims for maximal completion within reasonable constraints that don't sacrifice entertainment too much. This includes:

All forms of Spekkio except the highest level (Pink Nu) are defeated

All Tabs (stat upgrade items) that do not respawn are collected

All characters' Techs are learned

All the sidequests mentioned by Gaspar are completed (to the point he no longer mentions them)

At least 1 of every equipable item is collected

It isn't technically possible to do everything possible in Chrono Trigger without New Game+ and resetting a few times, but this run aims to get most of it done.

Some very heavy experience grinding occurs between 2:16:45 and 2:26:18. Viewers may wish to skip through this segment of the video.

While Chrono Trigger (1995) usually takes days to complete, Crono decided he'd rather not have to sit through all the unnecessary stuff, like long cutscenes, unskippable boss fights and key plot events, so he did it in three minutes instead.

The 18-minute improvement comes from utilizing mid-frame resets which were recently implemented in lsnes.

Reading the authors' comments is a requirement if you want so much as a clue to what's going on.

The first of the two "interactive fighters" for SNES based on the famous manga series Dragon Ball. "Totsugeki Hen" tells the story of the hero, Son Goku, following the first volume of the manga. The boy Son Goku meets a mysterious girl named Bulma, and she sends him on a mission to obtain the magical Dragon Balls. Naturally, Bulma is not the only one needing those Balls, so that the young hero will soon have to face and defeat some bad guys, including his first true rival Piccolo.

Dragon Ball Z: Super Saiya Densetsu (ドラゴンボールZ 超サイヤ伝説) is a role playing video game and the first Dragon Ball game for the Super Famicom. It was released only in Japan on January 25, 1992.

Super Saiya Densetsu is a remake combining two earlier Famicom games of the Gokuden series: Dragon Ball Z: Kyoushuu! Saiya Jin and Dragon Ball Z II: Gekishin Freeza!!, but without the movie characters and anime filler elements that were featured in them.

The game follows the rough outline of the Vegeta, Namek, and Frieza Sagas, with various add-ons and edits to make the story fit within the RPG guidelines, such as the inclusion of multi-colored Saibamen and re-colors of Frieza's henchmen and the Ginyu Force members as common enemies.

This is the fifth game of the series originally known as Dragon Warrior in the US; it remained untranslated until a port to the DS was released in 2008, where it received the name Dragon Quest V: Hand of the Heavenly Bride. It tracks the life of our hero, the son of Papas, over a large span of time from his adventurous childhood through tragic adolescence and a joyful marriage as he and his family fight to defeat evil.

You may be interested in watching earliergamesintheseries.
As the game text is in Japanese, the encodes feature translation in the form of subtitles courtesy of the author. There is also a second YouTube stream featuring more detailed information and commentary, also by the author.

Dragon View is a side-scrolling role-playing video game released for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System in November 1994. Released in Japan as Super Drakkhen and otherwise known as Drakkhen II, it is meant to be a prequel to Drakkhen although it bears little resemblance to its predecessor. It uses the same pseudo-3D overworld system for which the series is most famous. Other features of Dragon View are its side-view action role-playing game (RPG) hybrid gameplay (used when exploring more detailed areas such as towns and dungeons), its well-translated first person storyline, and its emphasis on player-driven undirected exploration.

In this run, Khaz makes the game realize how boring it really is, and has it jump straight to the credits roughly halfway through the intended story. A side effect of this particular glitch is the cutscene after the credits getting glitched out and having the main character walk in place, forever.

In E.V.O. you play as a creature who evolves by eating his opponents. Just like real life!

We recommend reading the author's notes. They are rather voluminous and contain a great deal of good information.
A Lua subtitle script is available in this run's forum thread with additional commentary from the author.

EarthBound is a great RPG, designed by Shigesato Itoi in 1994-1995,
and is also known by the name Mother 2.

It is best described as "random", in a good way.
The game has a great emphasis on a humor, and indeed many things
in the game are almost caricatured, from subplots to characters.
It also has a versatile soundtrack.

Our description for the previous movie stated, "Although this being a speedrun (tool-assisted at that), most of the
plot of the game is intact...". This time around, not so much. Thanks to some collision detection bugs, including one that shows that the Skip Sandwich is a fitting name for the item in ways the developers never intended, the author is able to move around the game's areas freely, completing the bare minimum number of tasks needed to keep the final battle from locking up.

Also unlike the previous movie, this one does use a death as a shortcut. However, the teddy bear survives this time around.

EarthBound, also known as Mother 2, is a great RPG, designed by Shigesato Itoi in 1994-1995. It is best described as "random", but in a good way. The game has a great emphasis on humor; indeed, many things in the game are almost caricatured, from subplots to characters. It also has a versatile soundtrack.

Pirohiko improved the previous TAS by almost 5 minutes by resetting at precisely the right time to corrupt the SRAM and skip most of the game, including the credits.
The second YouTube encode includes a scrolling input display.

Final Fantasy IV (renamed to Final Fantasy II in North-American publication)
was a revolution to the RPG genre. It was the first to introduce the active battle system, among many other redeeming qualities.

This movie plays through the game in a mere 2 hours, 53 minutes and 14 seconds. It aims for real time, but has a secondary goal of lowest in-game time when that does not incur an expense in real time.
The in-game completion time is 1:59:28.

The author also included many easter eggs, or surprise occurrences, throughout the movie. These have been detailed in the author's comments. We recommend reading the comments regarding this movie.

Note: This movie resets the game console a few times, first saving the game and then loading it, so to watch it on an emulator, you will need an emulator that supports recording the console resets.

This movie was made with the original English-language version. The downloadable encodes were encoded with the Action Replay code 0495DCFF, which keeps the music volume from decreasing while the game is paused. This greatly reduces the annoyance factor of constant pausing during battles, which is done to save time.

Final Fantasy IV, renamed to Final Fantasy II in North America, was a role-playing game that revolutionized the genre. It was the first Final Fantasy title to introduce the Active Time Battle system and one of the first RPGs to feature a complex, involving plot.

In this TAS, pirohiko blazes through the game in under two hours using a host of tricks, glitches, and battle strategies. We recommend reading the author's comments for more information on the route used.
A second YouTube stream is available with an informative overlay that the author used while creating the run.

Final Fantasy V is probably the least known of the Final Fantasy series on the SNES, because it was never published in the USA (PS1 port and GBA remake aside).

Through save corruption, game-breaking glitches and heavy glitch abuse eventually leading to arbitrary code execution, pirohiko ends the game in less than 11 minutes. Please read the author's comments for more details.

Watch as two Final Fantasy games, V and VI (VI is also III in North-American publication), are beaten with one controller's input. Since FFVI takes longer to beat than FFV, the FFV run also beats a few optional bosses which are not fought in the single-game run of FFV. The two games finish at the same time.

Since FFV is only available in Japanese, FFVI is also played with the Japanese version. The (J) version of FFVI also has an equipment glitch which is not present in the (U) version. Otherwise, this run of FFVI is quite similar to our single-game FFVI movie.

Final Fantasy VI (renamed to Final Fantasy III in North-American publication)
is arguably the most famous RPG on the SNES console.

This movie plays through the game in little over 4 hours by the means of
advanced analysis of the game engine, and the abuse of certain game errors/features
that give the ability to one-hit-knock-out even the strongest enemies ―
most prominently (but not only) the Joker Doom lore from Setzer’s slot machine.

A glitch involving Relm’s sketch ability was not used in this run. That glitch cannot be performed on this version of the ROM. There is another run using this glitch on the 1.0 version of the ROM.

The boss battles, including the last boss, might be somewhat
anticlimactic in this movie due to the unusual attack technique,
but besides being a very nice timeattack/TAS record, the movie
is a nice trip down the memory lane for those who have played
this game, and a graphically and especially musically pleasing
experience for even those who haven't.
This movie was made with the English-language version.

Released for the Super Famicom in 1996, Front Mission Series: Gun Hazard is the second installment of the Front Mission series. Unlike the numbered titles in the series, which are isometric tactical RPGs, Gun Hazard is a side-scrolling shooter which takes place in a completely separate universe. The game was never given an offical English release, but there is a high quality fan translation made by Aeon Genesis.

A fairly straightforward adventure RPG game played in very fast pace. Lots of events are squeezed into a movie of just 2 hours.

Note: This movie is three minutes longer than the previous one, because this plays the secret "Gem Mansion" which the previous version did not. Nevertheless, it is much more optimized than the previous version.

Lufia 2 is an adventure RPG prequel to Lufia 1. In this installment, Maxim and his cohorts set out to take down the evil Sinistrals.

The game sports a large amount of puzzles, yet a shockingly low amount of battles. Using RNG manipulation, this movie illustrates how to avoid many unimportant skirmishes so as to cut down on wasted time. This manipulation is also used to get more favorable item drops throughout the whole run.

Note that the (U) version of this ROM contains some graphical glitches. You can read more about these in the submission text.

SNES Lufia II: Rise of the Sinistrals (USA) "game end glitch" in 00:57.36 by Genisto.

Lufia 2 is an adventure RPG prequel to Lufia 1. In this installment, Maxim and his cohorts set out to take down the evil Sinistrals.

Normally, the game sports a large amount of puzzles, yet a shockingly low amount of battles. In this movie, however, Genisto uses 2 newly found glitches, explained in the submission text, which let anyone finish the game without even leaving the first room, improving the previous movie by almost 2 minutes.

Metal Max Returns is the remake of the NES game Metal Max. It features better graphics and sound, revised areas, references to Metal Max 2, and slightly decreased difficulty.

Because of the requirements for completion in this game, this movie is quite different from the original Metal Max (which was TASed by the same author, suwei). For a list of the differences and more information, see the author's notes.

The YouTube encode contains commentary from the author in the form of captions.

Our young hero Chezni, on a bet, enters and explores a forbidden tower and manages to activate an ancient machine deactivated 10,000 years ago. Naturally, he spends the next two and a half hours trying to figure out how to turn it off again.

This RPG is unusual because the player's health is used to cast magic spells, so there is no separate "MP" stat in this game. Rather than having a list of spells you learn, you instead gain the skills of several spirits; each spirit has its own spell, or you can combine two spirits to make a different spell. (In this run, you'll mostly see Chezni use the Fire Spirit, especially since repeated use of a spirit makes its magic stronger.) You can also recruit mercenaries to join your party at different points in the game, similar to The 7th Saga.

The author, janus completes this game an amazing 24 minutes faster than the previous run, largely due to massive use of AtkBack which makes enemies take a fraction of the damage that they inflict on the player. With this spell, the end bosses basically beat themselves up! There is also much more manipulation to minimize the number of random encounters. See the submission comments for more details.

In this installment of the long-running SaGa series you take control of several generations of the Imperial Dynasty in order to defeat 'the Seven'. The author completes this lengthy process in record time by using some nice glitches and good old luck manipulation.

Every 300 years, the Star of Death blocks the sun and all newborn lives die. No living thing could escape this fate. But one day, a baby survived, grew up, became the Devil King, and took over the world. He even opened the Abyss Gate and released the devil lords within before suddenly vanishing, leaving the world under the control of the four devil lords.

300 years later, the Death Eclipse hit the world again, and one baby survived again. This child grew up and became the Holy King, and with the support of many friends, drove the four demon lords back to the Abyss and resealed the Abyss Gate. It is now 10 years after the next Death Eclipse, and the whole world is eagerly watching for the new child of destiny. Will it be a Devil King or a Holy King?

You can play through the story controlling any one of the eight main characters - Julian, Monica, Mikhael, Harid, Katarina, Thomas, Elena, or Sarah. The story is common for all eight characters, and they often join together and share the same piece of the story.

The author, knbnitkr, completes the game in only 21:59.65 minutes by using a materialization bug to glitch out the game and skip right to the last dungeon. For more information about this bug, see the author's comments.

Shapeshifting dogs. Evil robots. Alchemy. Cheesy B movie references. These are all par for the course in Secret of Evermore, a very loose "sequel" to Secret of Mana. The story follows a boy that is thrust into a virtual world and finds himself with no immediate means to escape. As the boy travels, the geography changes to reflect certain eras of real-life history, adding a unique aspect to the game.

Shapeshifting dogs. Evil robots. Alchemy. Cheesy B movie references. These are all par for the course in Secret of Evermore, a very loose "sequel" to Secret of Mana. The story follows a boy that is thrust into a virtual world and finds himself with no immediate means to escape. As the boy travels, the geography changes to reflect certain eras of real-life history, adding a unique aspect to the game.

This movie takes advantage of a bug in the dialogue handling that was discovered by accident during a live streamed playthrough. Under certain conditions, the game will erroneously present a dialogue choice allowing the player to skip to unrelated parts of the game script, which is used to skip to the "The End" screen.

Secret of Mana is a widely popular action RPG published by Square. It is internationally regarded as the first game of the Mana series, though the Japanese title is Seiken Densetsu 2, so it is the sequel of Final Fantasy Adventure. It utilizes real-time battles like many other action RPGs while including some unique features such as the Ring Command and multiplayer action.

Touch-me beats the game very quickly, using three players simultaneously and a whole host of glitches. For instance, many bosses can be hit for 999 instant damage using a charge counter glitch, and certain plot points are skipped. See the submission comments for more details.
The YouTube encode contains commentary from the author in the form of hard subtitles.

Seiken Densetsu 3 is a RPG about your typical ragtag group of young adventurers that totally lack any survival instinct; at least that'd explain why they never bother to get any protective gear.
Our three chosen champions of goodness are tasked with rescuing the eight elemental spirits from the clutches of evil and using their power to save the world. Though it turns out that nobody is able to count as we find in fact nine spirits...

We recommend reading the author's notes; they contain a lot of very good information.
The provided MP4s and YouTube stream feature subtitles, allowing those of us who don't speak Japanese to figure out what's going on.

Soul Blazer is an RPG made by Enix considered to be somewhat related to its predecessor: ActRaiser. The main character is an angel sent to destroy invading monsters and release the captured souls of innocent people.

In this series, every action in monster lairs directly affects non-combat areas, and vice versa. That being said, much planning was needed for this run.

The ending is very long and requires user input, so the movie's length is about 13 minutes longer than what might be considered beating the game. Regardless, this run is an improvement of 17 minutes over the prior run thanks to new strategies and a swap to the Japanese version.

Tri-Ace's Star Ocean 1 is an RPG game similar to Namco's Tales of Phantasia or Square's Final Fantasy VI.

Because it was only released in Japan, and the first (almost) complete fan translation of the game was finished only a few years ago, this game isn't well known in western countries. Moreover, it has only been supported by SNES emulators for a short time, due to a graphics compression chip used in the game to fit the huge amount of beautiful graphics into the 6 MB ROM chip.

This is a tool-assisted speedrun of the Japanese version (the rules of the TASvideos site forbid the use of fan-translations when making speedruns).

We are sorry for the broken speech in the game intro. This is an emulation glitch. (Yes, the game actually includes English dialogue, which coincidentally has an identical twin in Star Trek.)

As usual with RPG runs, we recommend everyone to first play through this game before watching the movie. It will normally take a few days to complete the game once
― a few months to uncover all the features: secret characters and abilities and items. Beware, it's fun, and addictive.

In this unforgiving RPG that is The 7th Saga, the player picks a character and goes on an epic quest to find the seven magical runes, since each of these runes contains a great power for the one who wields it.

Kirkq and Nitrodon, the players who made this tool-assisted speedrun, chose Lux the Tetujin to complete this quest as fast as possible, forgoing a stat boosting glitch, and performing luck manipulation to defeat bosses at an impossibly low level!

The sixth installment of the Ultima series. The game normally involves tracking down runes, navigating huge dungeons, engaging in combat, locating pirate treasure and questing to restore peace between humans and gargoyles.

However, using an inventory corruption glitch, the author decides to take the quick route and skip over almost the entire game. See the author's comments for more information.

Wizardry V: Heart of the Maelstrom is an RPG from the well-known Wizardry series of games. Normally, these games are very long. However, in keeping with the TASVideos tradition of making long RPG runs short, this run reaches the ending in half a minute through extensive glitching of the save data. See the author's comments for more information.

Set in Japanese Edo period's Honshu Oboro Muramasa revolves around fast-paced spectacle fighting with RPG elements against vicious demons summoned by the titular Demon Blades. Two characters are available. Here, Bernka plays the amnesiac ninja Kisuke on highest difficulty, by way of which he gets granted only one hitpoint. Of course, this doesn't intimidate him in the slightest.

Please read the welcome page if you haven't already done so.
It explains the rules and methods that apply to all of these movies,
particularly the use of savestates and frame advance. Also refer to our Glossary to understand terms we use, such as TAS or other unfamiliar terms.